Ways to halt Gaza attack probed

The Egyptian ambassador to Israel was recalled to protest against the killing of a Hamas leader during the strikes on Gaza, reports Reem Leila

An Israeli soldier prays atop a tank near the border with the central Gaza Strip, Sunday (photo: Reuters)

A Palestinian man kisses the body of one of his children during their funeral in the northern Gaza Strip. Jumana Abu Sefan, 18 months old, and her brother Tamer, three and a half years old, were killed in an Israeli air strike on Sunday (photo: Reuters)

Smoke rises during an explosion from an Israeli forces strike in Gaza City, Saturday (photo: AP)

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived in Cairo this morning to discuss with President Mohamed Morsi the Israeli assault on Gaza. Erdogan and Morsi met for 40 minutes to study all the means available to find a ceasefire in Gaza.
Last night, Erdogan also signed several investment contracts with Egypt, reflecting mutual economic cooperation between the two countries.
Meanwhile, “President Morsi made several phone calls to the leaders of the US, France, Italy, Britain and Argentina to pressure Israel into halting its attacks on Palestinian territories,” presidential spokesman Yasser Ali said.
On Friday 16 November Prime Minister Hisham Kandil travelled to Gaza at the head of a high-ranking delegation in an unprecedented step to support the Palestinians against the Israeli onslaught. The delegation included Health Minister Mohamed Mustafa as well as a number of President Morsi’s aides. During the visit, Kandil discussed a possible ceasefire as well as a stop to the firing of missiles from the Gaza Strip to Israeli territories. Kandil, who visited Al-Shefaa medical centre in Gaza, condemned the Israeli attacks “against innocent Palestinians”.
Israel and the Palestinians have been exchanging fire for close to a week, leading to the killing of 29 Palestinians and three Israelis. The number of Palestinians injured is over 270.
During Kandil’s visit, Israel suspended its military attacks while Hamas fired at least 50 rockets during that time. During the visit which lasted for just a few hours, Kandil stated, “the Egyptian government will exert its utmost effort to halt the aggression in order to reach a truce between both sides… Egypt is keen on establishing a Palestinian state whose capital would be Jerusalem.”
The Israeli forces announced their targeting of 450 of what they claimed were terrorist sites in Gaza, whereas more than 330 missiles fired from Gaza landed in Israeli territory. The Israeli army declared that its missiles had destroyed more than 130 rockets which were heading towards Israel.
Israeli military forces also deployed tanks along the border with Gaza and mobilised almost 30,000 infantry reservists.
On Wednesday 14 November Israeli jet fighters killed Ahmed Al-Jabari, a leader of Hamas’s military wing.
That same day, Morsi recalled Egypt’s ambassador to Israel, Atef Salem, to protest against the Israeli attacks against Palestinians in Gaza. Presidential spokesman Ali stated in a press conference, “The president also summoned Israel’s ambassador to Egypt, Yaakov Amitai, to inform him of Egypt’s rejection of Israeli air strikes on Gaza.” Amitai has been Israel’s ambassador to Egypt since December 2011.
Morsi instructed Egypt’s representative at the United Nations to call for an emergency meeting of the Security Council. The president also urged the Arab League secretary-general to hold an emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers to discuss the current situation in Gaza and possible ways to deter the attacks.

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GrandpaDavey
wrote:

19-11-2012 08:35am

What Motivates Hamas?
I do not understand what motivates Hamas to fire all of those rockets at a much stronger enemy whom it has no hope of defeating, much less conquering. Is it acting for the benefit of Iran, regardless of the cost to Gaza? If so, my question stands. Hamas's conduct is indefensibly self-destructive.

Ian Flowers
wrote:

19-11-2012 08:09am

Nazi Propaganda Deserves No Place Here
JohnWV's comments are delusional, malevolent Jew hatred fit for a nazi propaganda sheet. The remark about Jewish "excesses" during the Weimar republic is symptomatic of the genocidal Jew hatred infest the Arab Muslim world, as personified by Hamas. When that ends you will find Israel to be the most wonderful loving neighbor one could have on this planet!

JohnWV
wrote:

18-11-2012 02:16am

Again
Since Imperial Rome, it has happened again and again. Jews enraged their neighbors and repeatedly suffered disastrous pogroms. Excesses of Weimar Germany's monied Jewish minority led to the most recent which Israel promotes, actually advertises, as justification for its apartheid malevolence. “Never again” is lost on Netanyahu's Israel. Blind to history, its paranoid pursuit of invulnerability, territorial conquest and supremacist empire in, and beyond, the Mideast ensures “again” on a far grander scale. Abandoning and aggressively isolating the Jewish state would force it abandon its grandiose aspirations and thereby avert its destruction. There is no greater or kinder support that America could render to both the Mideast and its “inseparable Mideast ally.”

JohnWV
wrote:

18-11-2012 02:12am

Punitive Reparations
Israel has made itself into a militant supremacist theocracy/ethnocracy with ICBM nukes; a very real and rapidly increasing threat to itself and to the whole world. A pariah among nations. Justice demands that UN and NATO impose resolution just as involuntary, disruptive and humiliating to Israel as Israel has wreaked upon occupied Palestine for generations. The Jewish State must be made to recognize an armed Palestine with externally enforced autonomy, eviction of all settlers, true contiguity encompassing Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem together, neither pinched nor parceled, and pay punitive reparations.